Gotham Gazette

The Place for New York Policy and politics

Opinion

Let's Restore the Right for All Legal Residents to Vote in New York City Elections


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Voters (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayoral Photo Office)


It’s been nearly a year since New York City was almost entirely shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, only essential services like health care, transportation, and food services remained open. We witnessed so many heroes step up to keep our city functioning and help us remain safe and secure. Among them are the half-a-million immigrants who have been on the frontline in hospitals, restaurants, grocery stores, subways and busses, and more.

As New York City moves towards rebuilding its economy, we have an opportunity to create a more inclusive recovery by fully integrating into our civic life the immigrants who are helping us survive this pandemic, giving them a voice in shaping the policies that affect their lives. If we are serious about creating the culture of civic participation our city needs in order to function as a healthy democracy, we must expand democracy’s foundation.

New York City can do this by restoring the right to vote in local elections to the nearly 1 million legal permanent residents who call the city home.

Although 40% of our city was born abroad, we have never centered immigrants in our narratives, and certainly not in our city’s policies and budgets. Elected officials know they can safely ignore those without voting power, so problems remain unsolved and unaddressed election after election. The result is the predictable disengagement that comes from not feeling wholly belonging to the very place one calls home. 

Despite the fact that many immigrants in the Big Apple are our city’s parents, students, workers, and small business owners, these New Yorkers have been unfairly denied the right to shape their community. As a further testament to how vital immigrants are to our city, non-citizen New Yorkers represent one in five frontline, essential workers who are literally risking their lives to keep us healthy and keep our city functioning during the ongoing pandemic.

New Yorkers like Hina Naveed deserve a say in how their public transportation works, how often their trash gets picked up, and how schools are run. Hina, a Pakistani immigrant and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, was on the frontlines during the height of the pandemic last year working in a Brooklyn hospital and a Staten Island nursing home. While many of us were lucky enough to work safely from home, during the height of our public health crisis, Hina took care of sick patients and comforted the elderly who were lonely and missing their families during New York City’s shutdown. But despite her contributions as an essential worker, she’s excluded from the process of how our neighborhoods and elected officials respond to a devastating crisis like the one that we are experiencing now. 

How can we expect to have a fair and just covid recovery if 1 million taxpaying New Yorkers like Hina don’t have a say in deter mining who will make those recovery decisions? How can we expect to address issues of police reform, affordable housing, equitable land use, and educational disparities if elected officials know they can still get elected while ignoring one out of every nine New Yorkers?

The City Council and Mayor must pass Intro. 1867 and give these immigrant New Yorkers a voice and real political power and they’ll make sure our elected officials are truly accountable — not just to the privileged few, but to every one of us, especially the 1 million New Yorkers who have been effectively silenced for decades. Together we can build a city that reflects and works for all of us. And in the process, we can energize our civic life, and make a statement to the rest of the world about what a 21st century democracy should look like.

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Murad Awawdeh is co-executive director of the statewide New York Immigration Coalition, based in New York City. On Twitter @HeyItsMurad & @TheNYIC.

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Justice for Excluded Workers


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Assemblymember De La Rosa, the author, speaking at a rally for 'excluded workers'


The approval this week of the nation’s first-ever Excluded Workers Fund is a bold statement that New York recognizes the humanity in everyone, and that we must secure the basic necessities of all people during a global pandemic. It also acknowledges that immigrants contribute greatly to our tax-base and the backbone of our community.  

No one deserves to go hungry or die, or to not have money to bury their loved ones, pay for housing, health care, and other fundamental needs while a pandemic wreaks havoc across the world. It is a matter of compassion, empathy, solidarity, and core human decency.

Since the pandemic first hit in March 2020, thousands of undocumented and nontraditional workers across the state have suffered the injustice of being excluded from every government relief program. Over 192,000 undocumented workers (who records show pay $1.4 billion in yearly taxes) lost their jobs, none of whom were eligible for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA), according to a report by the Center for NYC Affairs at the New School. The Center also reported that 68% of jobs lost in New York City were among people of color. 

In May 2020 I partnered with New York State Senator Jessica Ramos to introduce a bill for the first-in-the-nation Excluded Workers Fund before the New York State Legislature. It was a long road before the Fund’s approval, including hearings, a rally that shut down Brooklyn Bridge, and a 22-day hunger strike led by excluded workers. 

The $2.1 billion fund, part of the new state budget, will provide retroactive benefits to workers who have been unable to access a single penny in government aid up to this point. This funding will be crucial to closing the economic disparities of the pandemic, which has disproportionately affected Black and brown communities such as Washington Heights and Inwood, the communities of Assembly District 72, which I represent. 

As we move towards implementation, I thank Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and my colleagues in the Assembly, Senator Ramos and colleagues in the Senate, Make The Road New York, New York Communities for Change, New York Immigration Coalition, and the members of the FEW Coalition, who joined us in the quest for budget equity and justice for excluded workers. We will now provide oversight over the state Department of Labor to ensure that a fair process is built to apply for and receive benefits from the Excluded Workers Fund.

While working class New Yorkers reeled from the virus and struggled to pay rent, the wealth of New York’s 120 billionaires grew by $87.7 billion. It is about time that New Yorkers finally demand that the ultrarich pay their fair share and that all New Yorkers are taken care of. New York’s new budget serves as a model for how governments can pursue progressive revenue streams to redistribute wealth, move toward budget equity, and better serve the people. The revenue raised will transform the live s of millions of New Yorkers as we fund excluded workers, expand affordable housing, and invest in our schools.

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Carmen De La Rosa is the State Assembly Member for the 72nd District in Upper Manhattan. On Twitter @CnDelarosa.

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